An apprenticing with a problem approach

We are in an age of heropreneurship: everyone wants to “be” a social entrepreneur. The myth of the entrepreneur creates a false hierarchy with “start-up founder” at the top. We foster this obsession in our education, our funding, our awards, and our media. But we don’t just need more founders. We need more positive social impact.

This report, including resources, tools, and life maps, was designed to help individuals, educators, and funders move us from a focus on the social entrepreneur to a focus on creating positive social impact. To get there, we need to help people work towards collective impact, give them the tools, accolades, and incentives to apprentice with problems they didn’t live before asking them to solve them, and support people to understand and build upon the existing efforts of others rather than “innovating” in a vacuum.